Baking Day 2008

As you might guess from the previous post, I love baking holiday goodies around Christmastime. I love how the house smells, and I like to give away plates of the yummy cookies and candies I make.

This year the decorated sugar cookies went into the packages I mailed to my parents and my bro, so they were long gone after only a day. I didn't really have many baked goods around the house, and here it was, less than a week before the big day! Then, my co-worker Samantha mentioned she was gonna be baking nearly the whole afternoon on Sunday... so I offered to come keep her company. I thought I might make a batch of choc chip cookies or something, just to stay busy during our time in the kitchen.

Well, that offer morphed into me coming for the whole afternoon and she put me to WORK! It was a blast though, and I learned how to make peppermint bark (there's a pic of me showing it off!) and we also made several dozen chocolate pizelle cookies, which I'd never made before.

Here's a list of everything we did:
2 batches peppermint bark
2 batches fudge
6 or 7 dozen pizelles (depends on if you count the burnt ones!
2 batches chocolate chip cookie dough (to be baked later on)
2 batches jam thumbprint cookie dough (same)
1 pound chocolate covered pretzels
1 batch peanut butter chocolate bars
And a partridge in a pear tree!!! (phew!)

We went to the store and bought supplies first. I think we are singlehandedly keeping Nestle in the black this year! Yes, we actually used every single bag of chocolate. And an entire 5lb bag of both sugar and flour. And I stopped counting after 3 pounds of butter, eek.

Then it was time for the prep work. Here's Samantha trying to organize the ingredients for each item.

Samantha was hard at work on the pizelle maker. This quickly became my task so she could start the fudge, and after burning a few, (uh... maybe I should say SEVERAL cookies!) I caught on to the timing. It only takes about 40 seconds for the cookies to "bake". But since you're only making 2 at a time, it took a while to get to 6 or 7 dozen. I don't actually know how many we ended up with, I lost count! I will admit I was glad to be finished and move on to cookie dough making.

Samantha's daughter Lily woke up from her nap ready to sign up for Pizelle tasting duty. Isn't she a cutie?!

At fudge time, we enlisted help! Here's Hank stirring the pot 'o chocolate. We also put his muscles to work crushing the candy canes, and again called on him to help carry the trays of peppermint bark out to the fridge in the garage to cool. He was a trooper, and even bought us a pizza so we didn't starve in the kitchen full of chocolate. Yea- the peppermint bark is done! It turned out so delish. I'm gonna make it from now on, making it was easier than I thought, for sure. This was such a fun day. My feet hurt afterwards from standing on the hard floor with no shoes for so long, but I have only myself to blame for that choice! I am now totally set to give out lots of plates of treats to family and friends. The rest will come to the cabin over New Year's... I think it will get eaten pretty quickly up there.

Samantha and I both decided to make this an annual tradition, it was so much more enjoyable sharing the work between us. Next time maybe we'll schedule pedicures for the next day!

Hope you are enjoying your Christmas season, and indulging (a little at least) in some of the homemade baked goods around you. Merry Christmas!